Hello! I have a Windows 8.1 laptop. When I create a new level from scratch, and make a platform for me to stand on, and I click play. It says lightning needs to be rebuilt. So, I create a light, and still doesn’t work. SO, I trying building my light, but after it tries to build it, my laptop shuts off… Automatically. I’ve tried build all. I’ve tried MANY times… Over and over. Still does shuts off. Building paths work great… Just not building light. Please help!
Building light is a CPU intensive task. It will use as much as 100% if it can. It sounds like your laptop is overheating and turning itself off to protect the CPU from being damaged.
This would be my thought as well.
If you build lighting on one of the example maps is this happening as well, or is it just in your own level that you’ve created?
- If it’s your own level, is it a large world with lots of objects?
- Do you have a lightmass importance volume in your scene?
- Can you your DxDiag as well?
Thanks!
Tim
Well, building light does not shut off my laptop, Anymore… Though, it takes a long time to build it and Building Fails.
But, anyways, here is my SYSTEM INFORMATION:
System Information
Time of this report: 2/18/2015, 19:07:08
Machine name: -CENSORED-
Operating System: Windows 8.1 Enterprise 32-bit (6.3, Build 9600) (9600.winblue_r7.150109-2022)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: Inspiron 3520
BIOS: BIOS Date: 09/28/12 14:42:00 Ver: 04.06.05
Processor: Intel(R) Core™ i3-2350M CPU @ 2.30GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3458MB RAM
Page File: 2963MB used, 4493MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.03.9600.16384 32bit Unicode
Building failing is probably due to hardware limitations. While the editor will run and build lights with 4 gb of system ram it’s not the best option. Increasing to the recommended 8gb of ram would be more stable with light builds. The problem that happens with light builds is that it’s resource heavy and when Ram runs out it will use the virtual memory cache. This will increase build times significantly because it’s writing to the hard drive.
Things that can help with light builds would be to use lower lightmap resolutions, networked build farms, increase system memory and the virtual cache memory if system memory upgrade is not possible.
How can I get more RAM on my laptop?
Depends on the laptop. Often it requires moving a panel on the bottom. You will need to look up how to upgrade memory for your specific laptop model. You will also want to make sure that you can upgrade beyond 4gb. Some motherboard have hard limits on how much they can use.
If you just want to increase the virtual cache the Windows help documentation is a good start. This is one I found by searching “Increase Virtual Cache Windows.”
Does deleting program files help?
That would only help if you need to increase the virtual memory cache on the hard drive possibly. I don’t think it would have a significant impact though to help build lighting any faster as writing the cache to the hard drive is a very slow process compared to having more RAM.
Okay. Do I HAVE to build lighting? And a way to remove this error from screen?
You don’t have to build lighting, but if you’re using any static lighting and the lighting has not been built it will have the “Lighting needs to be rebuilt” tag in the top left. This can only be removed in the source files.
If you use Dynamic lighting this will cause more of a performance hit with FPS as dynamic lighting, in itself, is not expensive to use, but with shadow casting enabled it will be very expensive depending on the number of shadow casting objects in your scene.